I lived in the Canadian prairies for years. Every once-in-a-while a cougar would be sighted. They can travel long distances along river valleys.
Two this year have been conclusively confirmed far outside their current range. This one was captured by a cottage surveillance camera.
An extremely rare sighting of a cougar has been confirmed in the Lac du Bonnet area of Manitoba. …
Cougars have seen me in the wild many times. But I’ve never spotted any of them. They are very elusive.
Here’s is the “normal” range:
Pumas (Puma concolor), also called cougars or mountain lions, are large wild cats, … mainly tan-coloured, and can be up to 1.85 metres long.
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I’ve been lucky (?) enough to see two mountain lions. One was in the Anza Borrego area, seen on another ridge via binoculars. The second one was when I was leaving my office (I work near Stanford University, close to the mountains). I was sitting at a stoplight and saw one on the hillside ahead of me.